PRISA national conference around the corner

“Human beings, it would appear, are neurologically uniquely wired to make sense of their environment and their experiences,” says Dr Van der Merwe, who also states that this field of study is as little for the feint-hearted as it is for brave-hearted.

“Neuro-Hermeneutics transcends these dispositions and will appeal to those who are both courageous and sensitive enough to face all of life - and, who wants to work with all six the senses and beyond.”

Exploration into this field can assist organisations to live and breathe constant change as we learn to cope with “the certainty about uncertainty” as this century progresses.

Dr Van der Merwe's presentation will be made during the pre-conference programme on Tuesday, 17 June 2008.

Key note speaker

PRISA has managed to secure Professor Noreena Hertz of Cambridge University as keynote speaker for the conference. Hertz is said to be the most prominent political economist of our time and will speak about globalisation, the erosion of democracy and the international debt situation. These issues, ultimately, will impact on the way in which communication professionals adapt messages being transmitted to a public suspicious of authority, business and industry.

“Globalisation, democracy and debt are amongst the primary subjects that will influence the practice of communication in the years to come,” says Mixael de Kock, PRISA President. “The objective of this conference is to look towards disciplines and research outside of public relations to be able to predict how new thinking elsewhere will impact on our practice of communication in future.”

“Information from the five traditional senses - touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight - all combine with our inner knowledge to give rise to consciousness. Likewise, information from outside of our profession is required to be integrated with our existing knowledge of the science of communication to ensure that we become sensitive to our environment and everything therein.”

On the pre-conference day, topics will range from new thinking on how the brain works to the nature of intelligence and consciousness. Neuro-linguistics, neuro-semantics and neuro-hermeneutics, together with papers on emotional, social, ethical and spiritual intelligence, will be discussed.

Industry-oriented subjects

Following this, the PRISA two-day conference, 18 - 19 June 2008, will be devoted to more industry-orientated subjects such as the formulation of ethics, predicting trends and how we arrive at future scenarios. Hertz's presentation will form part of the first day. Then, on day two, among others, Services Seta chief executive Ivor Blumenthal will discuss professionalisation of the industry.

In the afternoon there will be various workshops. In this section, the top awardees of the recent PRISA PRISM Awards will showcase their winning entries.

De Kock concludes: “The more outside knowledge we bring into our profession the more of an instinctual Sixth Sense we will be able to develop; emerging from such multi-disciplinary interaction will be an increased ability to communicate clearly and succinctly into a new world with new challenges such as global warming and climatic change.”

For more information, go to www.prisa.co.za.